Would you trust thousands of low-level Federal bureaucrats and contractors with one-touch access to your private financial and medical information? Under Obamacare you won’t have any choice.

As the Obamacare train-wreck begins to gather steam, there is increasing concern in Congress over something called the Federal Data Services Hub. The Data Hub is a comprehensive database of personal information being established by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to implement the federally facilitated health insurance exchanges. The purpose of the Data Hub, according to a June 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, is to provide “electronic, near real-time access to federal data” and “access to state and third party data sources needed to verify consumer-eligibility information.” In these days of secret domestic surveillance by the intelligence community, rogue IRS officials and state tax agencies using private information for political purposes, and police electronically logging every license plate that passes by, the idea of the centralized Data Hub is making lawmakers and citizens nervous.

This spring, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawyers were also told by HHS that, despite the fact that navigators will have access to sensitive data such as Social Security numbers and tax returns, there will be no criminal background checks required for them. Indeed, they won’t even have to have high-school diplomas. Both U.S. Census Bureau and IRS employees must meet those minimum standards, if only because no one wants someone who has been convicted of identity theft getting near Americans’ personal records. But HHS is unconcerned. It points out that navigators will have to take a 20–30 hour online course about how the 1,200-page law works, which, given its demonstrated complexity, is like giving someone a first-aid course and then making him a med-school professor. “I want to assure you and all Americans that, when they fill out their [health-insurance] marketplace applications, they can trust the information they’re providing is protected,” said Marilyn Tavenner, head of HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, at a congressional hearing last week. In the age of Wikileaks and IRS abuses, somehow that isn’t very comforting.“The standards proposed by your department could result in a convicted felon receiving federal dollars and gaining access to confidential taxpayer information,” a group of nine Republican senators led by Utah’s Orrin Hatch wrote to Secretary Sebelius last month. “The same standards allow any individual who has registered with the exchange and completed two days of training to facilitate enrollment, as if the decision to purchase health insurance is similar to the decision of registering to vote.”

Indeed, voter registration is among the goals of the folks hawking Obamacare. The People’s World newspaper reports: “California’s Secretary of State Debra Bowen is designating the state’s new Health Benefit Exchange, Covered California, as a voter registration agency under the National Voter Registration Act. That means Covered California will be incorporating voter registration into every transaction — online, in-person and by phone — it has with consumers.” It seems as if some Obama supporters have found a new way to fill the void left by the bankruptcy of ACORN, the notorious left-wing voter-registration group that saw dozens of its employees in multiple states convicted of fraud.

At least the pay will be better. ACORN was infamous for stiffing its employees and even once sued the state of California to ask for an exemption from its minimum-wage law. But early reports are that the federal government will be offering navigators between $20 and $48 an hour. In many states, that’s far more than many private-sector workers with corresponding responsibilities earn.

If there is a silver lining in all of this, it is that the potential failure of the navigators program could further convince voters that Obamacare is simply unworkable. “The Obama administration wants something the federal government has never done: a computer system that connects HHS, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, Homeland Security and perhaps other departments,” John Goodman, a health-care expert with the National Center for Policy Analysis, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in May. “For perspective, consider that the Veterans Administration converted to electronic medical records in 1998 and the VA and the Defense Department tried without success to share records until February [2013] when then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that the plan would be abandoned.”

But the consensus is that, if Obamacare isn’t repealed, the government can, with enough effort and money, get the Data Hub up and running. That concerns many members of Congress.

“Giving community organizers access to the Federal Data Hub is bad policy and potentially a danger to civil liberties,” House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan told me recently. “But it’s one of the most underreported stories I’ve seen. If people only knew about this Data Hub program, it would touch off a huge public outcry.”

The useful idiot retort to this is Big Gov hacks can get all your info if they really want it, but the fact that hacks behave badly is no reason to make it acceptable. This administration just keeps lowering the bar on what is ethical behavior and his useful idiots just follow along. The really are a mindless group.

The last thing we want is for government hacks to have more information on us. I have no doubt the Obama administration "encouraged" the NSA and IRS to target conservatives. They did not have to directly instruct them as they are all a part of the same sick mindset. I am sure these useful idiots came up with the ideas, knowing what they had at their disposal. Then without a moral compass in this administration telling them to avoid all such behavior, they saw it as a green light.

And now with Obamacare, they want to have the queen mother of all databases which WILL BE USED to target political opponents for harassment. This administration already used so-called secure data to target their political enemies in 2012. It will get worse, much worse.

No one with sense is going to think this is an "obama" problem. Despite your hackery and effort, the longstanding efforts of the government to surveil it's own citizens stretches back prior to the Obama administration and will likely extend far beyond it.

No one with sense is going to think this is an "obama" problem. Despite your hackery and effort, the longstanding efforts of the government to surveil it's own citizens stretches back prior to the Obama administration and will likely extend far beyond it.

yet, it IS expanding under Obama and ObamaCare is blazing a much bigger path into one's personal life

why does this not bother you, you like Obama enough to give up your civil liberties I don't like any politician enough to give up my freedoms, even if Rand Paul was behind it I'd be just as worried

“Nothing makes me more certain of the victory of our ideas than our success in the universities” – Adolf H, 1930

No one with sense is going to think this is an "obama" problem. Despite your hackery and effort, the longstanding efforts of the government to surveil it's own citizens stretches back prior to the Obama administration and will likely extend far beyond it.

No one with sense is going to think this is an "obama" problem. Despite your hackery and effort, the longstanding efforts of the government to surveil it's own citizens stretches back prior to the Obama administration and will likely extend far beyond it.

And poor Obama is just helpless to do anything about it. I wish he were just useless as you like to think he is.

Just think of all the things we can think of that were horrible longstanding traditions that people made this same argument for that do not exist today.

However this specific expansion of the invasiveness of government in Obamacare did not exist prior to Obama. The law has his signature on it In addition to the obvious reason it is referred to as Obamacare and not Hillarycare or Bushcare or Hoovercare or Washingtoncare.

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation. A politician looks for the success of his party; a statesman for that of the country. The statesman wished to steer, while the politician was satisfied to drift.

No one with sense is going to think this is an "obama" problem. Despite your hackery and effort, the longstanding efforts of the government to surveil it's own citizens stretches back prior to the Obama administration and will likely extend far beyond it.

yet, it IS expanding under Obama and ObamaCare is blazing a much bigger path into one's personal life

No. Your personal life is no longer private. Every device you carry can be tracked, your credit card purchases can be tracked, your viewing habits on television and the radio to which you listen. Every step you take in a mall can be tracked by RFID and also your driving habits can be tracked as well via license plate readers on police cars and traffic cameras. There is NOTHING that the government can't do at this point to pry into your life and completely profile you to determine if you are risk to the state.

You keep blaming Obama but you don't realize that the NSA is not going to stop expanding. It never has. The only thing that makes it more obvious to you is that you are becoming more aware of the avenues that the government can use to observe, track and influence your life. Bringing Obamacare into this is retarded - like the idea of this thread. Complaining that you are losing that which you have already lost, due to your own party making you focus on divisive social issues, tells people more about you than it does about the problem of government surveillance. It tells everyone that you're easily led.

why does this not bother you, you like Obama enough to give up your civil liberties I don't like any politician enough to give up my freedoms, even if Rand Paul was behind it I'd be just as worried

SpinnerMan wrote:However this specific expansion of the invasiveness of government in Obamacare did not exist prior to Obama.

Yes, this mess has Obama's name on it. However, I don't believe for a minute that an R wouldn't have done it if they thought they could get away with it.

Politicians are politicians. That's a given.

Some people are clamoring for their politicians to do these kind of things and some are clamoring for their politicians to STOP doing these things.

When Democrat voters get what they vote for, it is a disaster.

When Republican voters don't get what they vote for, it is a disaster.

All politicians want to be central planners. None of them go there to run a small decentralized government with little power over other people's lives and money. That's no fun. That's a waste of their unbelievable brilliance and expertise which is why only they can hold this office regardless of how many naked pictures they have tweeted, no many how many laws they have broken, no matter how badly their ideas fail in practice, only they can do it and they need to be their for life.

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation. A politician looks for the success of his party; a statesman for that of the country. The statesman wished to steer, while the politician was satisfied to drift.

There you are again operating without a subject. Again, it is too late to try and tell people that they could lose their privacy... Because they already have.

If you think that that it's not too late for something else then maybe you should actually state exactly what "it" is, so no one thinks you are talking about pizza delivery or learning how to read with comprehension.

SpinnerMan wrote:However this specific expansion of the invasiveness of government in Obamacare did not exist prior to Obama.

Yes, this mess has Obama's name on it. However, I don't believe for a minute that an R wouldn't have done it if they thought they could get away with it.

Politicians are politicians. That's a given.

Some people are clamoring for their politicians to do these kind of things and some are clamoring for their politicians to STOP doing these things.

When Democrat voters get what they vote for, it is a disaster.

When Republican voters don't get what they vote for, it is a disaster.

All politicians want to be central planners. None of them go there to run a small decentralized government with little power over other people's lives and money. That's no fun. That's a waste of their unbelievable brilliance and expertise which is why only they can hold this office regardless of how many naked pictures they have tweeted, no many how many laws they have broken, no matter how badly their ideas fail in practice, only they can do it and they need to be their for life.

assateague wrote:So what has Obama done in an attempt to stop or slow it down?

Why should he? Really, tell me why he should?

You seem to be of the opinion that if it's not in the constitution that it's not okay. The right to privacy? Is it listed? Maybe you should ask Justice Scalia.

It's YOUR choice to put politicians in place that represent you. If there's money in not representing their constituents, then either remove the politician with a recall, remove their pensions for not earning them, and remove money from Washington to keep the problem from happening again.

assateague wrote:So what has Obama done in an attempt to stop or slow it down?

Why should he? Really, tell me why he should?

You seem to be of the opinion that if it's not in the constitution that it's not okay. The right to privacy? Is it listed? Maybe you should ask Justice Scalia.

It's YOUR choice to put politicians in place that represent you. If there's money in not representing their constituents, then either remove the politician with a recall, remove their pensions for not earning them, and remove money from Washington to keep the problem from happening again.

Good luck with that.

Why should he adhere to any campaign promise

By the way, I have known for some time we are tracked by data usage by companies. Wal Mart blazed that trail years ago with shopping habits and has used that to their advantage. Obama and company used data mining to help influence voters on the fence this past election. They used forensic psychs to use targeted words to help sway opinion. Noticed the MSM parroting word for word, wonder why?

ObamaCare will open NEW doors to a large number of people, that's not here say, it's fact. After the IRS scandal it is extremely obvious they have taken bullying DC style to a new level. Why worry, the MSM has their back. I'm glad you trust them, I trust no one in Government. PERIOD.

“Nothing makes me more certain of the victory of our ideas than our success in the universities” – Adolf H, 1930

assateague wrote:So what has Obama done in an attempt to stop or slow it down?

Why should he? Really, tell me why he should?

You seem to be of the opinion that if it's not in the constitution that it's not okay. The right to privacy? Is it listed?

I stopped reading at this point. Because, once again, you're an idiot.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

WOLVERINES

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Let a man vote to give himself a fish and he eats until society collapses.

assateague wrote:So what has Obama done in an attempt to stop or slow it down?

Why should he? Really, tell me why he should?

You seem to be of the opinion that if it's not in the constitution that it's not okay. The right to privacy? Is it listed?

I stopped reading at this point. Because, once again, you're an idiot.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

SpinnerMan wrote:Some people are clamoring for their politicians to do these kind of things and some are clamoring for their politicians to STOP doing these things.I can't help but think that those supporting Obamacare will be sorry if/when the R's are in charge.When Democrat voters get what they vote for, it is a disaster.

When Republican voters don't get what they vote for, it is a disaster.We usually don't get what we vote for, they lie.All politicians want to be central planners. None of them go there to run a small decentralized government with little power over other people's lives and money. That's no fun. That's a waste of their unbelievable brilliance and expertise which is why only they can hold this office regardless of how many naked pictures they have tweeted, no many how many laws they have broken, no matter how badly their ideas fail in practice, only they can do it and they need to be their for life.

I'd say that's an accurate statement for the majority of them. They want to live like kings & queens and to heck with the peasantry.

slowshooter wrote:It's YOUR choice to put politicians in place that represent you. If there's money in not representing their constituents, then either remove the politician with a recall, remove their pensions for not earning them, and remove money from Washington to keep the problem from happening again.

Don't you realize the electorate is too busy with more important issues to pay attention to political matters? We've got to name a baby in England!